Kolossos wrote:
so many wonderful things were created at Toolserver, so many nice cooperation’s with other users happen here and so many things I learn on Toolserver. I don't want look back in anger.
Yes! :-) I think if someone proposed a Toolserver today, people would object for legal reasons and technical reasons and whatever else. But much like Wikipedia, the Toolserver somewhat inexplicably just works. Giving people a place to collaborate, to share, and to access data insanely fast is a beautiful thing.
I know that all of these was only possible with your work Dab. So thank you very much.
My thanks as well. In my opinion, even being a paid sysadmin is annoying and awful. I can't imagine being in this kind of volunteer position for years. Thank you, DaB.!
A modification/restart of Toolserver seems for me after the years so or so necessary and perhaps we can find in the next 6 months a concept for a leaner, powerful Toolserver that gives the WMDE flexibility and independence back to develop ideas and support free projects. Hardware support is for me still a very good way of spending money if we want to support free knowledge, but it makes in my eyes no sense to fight against the majority of WMDE.
Yes. I think building out infrastructure that would allow individual Wikimedia chapters (or other organizations) to set up their own Toolservers would be wonderful. With AWS and other hosting services coming down in price, it seems like it would be a great investment. The Poles have their own Toolserver (http://tools.wikimedia.pl/). And obviously the Germans have one. ;-) I've been trying to grow the idea of an American Toolserver. We'll see what happens.
All that said, Tim L. had some very good points. There are plenty of lessons to be learned from the Toolserver, I think. The _user to root ratio_ in particular needs a lot of consideration for any future iterations. It frustrates me as much as anyone else that we have hundreds of Toolserver users, of which at least a dozen would be capable and willing to donate their expertise and time to serve as a root, and yet there was basically a root lock-out for years.
And as I've previously mentioned on this list, stability is a wonderful thing. Not unreasonable expectations about uptime or anything like that, but just making a good effort to avoid breaking changes when possible (e.g., OS or Web server or job scheduling changes) and avoiding complications where possible (KISS).
There's lots to learn from German Toolserver I, but I don't regret the experience. My thanks to River, DaB., and everyone else who's helped over the years.
MZMcBride